Here are the top 10 Chicago investment sales of the first quarter

Starwood Capital and Slate Office REIT made their entries into the downtown Chicago office market during the first quarter, with the No. 2 and No. 3 sales of the quarter, respectively.

The market for office investment sales had a strong start to the year, with more than $1.2 billion in deals, according to a report by NKF, which notes that 2015 was the only year in the past four in which office sales downtown hit the 10-figure mark.

Even outside of the few marquee deals, the quarter saw some significant properties change hands, including a hotel still under construction in the booming Fulton Market neighborhood, a would-be data center site scooped up by one of the city’s most significant office building owners and the largest condo deconversion in town to date.

Take a look at the full list, and stay tuned for more quarterly and monthly rankings like this one.

Sterling Bay tops the list of buyers with its pickup of the 1.4 million-square-foot 600 West Chicago Avenue, home to Groupon’s headquarters, from Equity Commonwealth. The sale was brokered by Eastdil Secured and closed in February.

Barry Sternlicht’s Starwood Capital made its entry into the Chicago market with the January purchase of One South Dearborn, an 833,000-square-foot, Class A office building. Around the time of the closing, the building re-signed its largest tenant, law firm Sidley Austin, to a 575,000-square-foot lease through 2030.

This 427-unit apartment complex in the Mt. Greenwood neighborhood on the far Southwest Side of the city sold in late February. Castle Lanterra Equity bought the complex in April 2014 for $28.5 million, according to Commercial Observer.

WeWork occupies about 77,000 square feet in the building, which sits in the heart of the Fulton Market district, where Shapack has several other properties, including 801-811 West Fulton Market and the Parker Fulton Market, a 29-story luxury rental tower that opened in 2016.

This 4.5 acre site was slated for development as a data center when Ascent Corp. bought it for $27 million about five years ago. 601W Companies, which is redeveloping the nearby Old Main Post Office into Class A office space also recently bought other sites in the immediate area, including a parking lot at 527 South Clinton Street for $10 million.

According to the Chicago Tribune, the asking price for this 75,000-square-foot loft office building was $17.5 million. It hit the market about a year ago.
Source: The Real Deal analysis of Chicago sales transactions identified as closed in Real Capital Analytics’ database between Jan. 1 and March 31.